


The Ghost Of Warmth

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Marvel
Genre: First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sickfic, heat waves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 17:16:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15199634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: The heat rather gets to Loki, and Fandral cannot help his panic.





	The Ghost Of Warmth

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: loki fainting from the heat one asgardian summer and fandral freaking out for a prompt ?

It’s not entirely natural. It comes from some singularity in the cosmos, momentarily concentrating the glare of the sun upon Asgard, and the heat is… Truly unbearable. A single day this hot is not unheard of, but it has been nearly a week now, with so little breeze. Oppressive and disgustingly  _dry_ , with next to no humidity in the air, Loki is left breathing shallowly at the edge of the arena, his head against the back wall.

The others are fine. 

They’re sweating, somewhat, each of them: Loki can see the moisture glistening on Thor’s face and shirtless chest, sees the sheen on Hogun and Fandral, and sweat dripping down Sif’s arms and bare midriff. Volstagg is red in the face, his beard and hair tied tightly up and away from his skin, and it is  _damp._

But still, they spar! Laughing and running in the dirt, wrestling with one another or training staff-to-staff. They drink more water than they ordinarily would, but otherwise, they seem  _fine_. 

“Disinterested in training today, Loki?” Thor calls, grinning. “Surely the book inside isn’t taking too much of your attention?” Loki shrugs his shoulders. He touches his fingers to the side of his jaw, which is bone dry, no sweat in sight. He feels sick with it, feels like his very organs will  _burst_  and boil inside him, and yet when he had attempted to gracefully make his excuses, Thor had seemed so  _disappointed–_

Shakily, Loki stands to his feet.

Fandral is frowning at him, his staff held upright at his side, and he sees Fandral’s hand touch to Thor’s arm. “Thor,” Fandral murmurs. “I don’t think he’s well.”

“He isn’t even sweating,” Thor says, but there is concern on his face as he looks back at Loki. He looks at Loki with his brow furrowed, his lips downturned in concern, and Loki feels embarrassment surge within him. Excellent - already, Thor’s friends think him weak, and here now it is compounded. 

They’re all staring at him, and Loki puts up his palm, dragging a staff on the wall to his palm. Hogun tuts at him - he isn’t supposed to use his seidr in the arena unless it’s been agreed upon for a fight - elsewise, to be sure, there would be an enchantment to keep his skin warm settled on his flesh. 

“Loki, are you alright?” Thor asks. 

“I’m fine,” Loki mutters, and he holds the staff straight before him. “Come then, Thor, if you are so intent upon my involvement.” Thor frowns.

“Loki,” Thor says. “Are you certain you’re not feeling ill? You look–” Loki aims a blow directly at the side of his cheek, and Thor has to move quickly to block it with the brace on his wrist, catching the wooden side of the staff. Hogun passes him his own staff, and Thor takes it in his hands, facing Loki properly.

The concern is fading, replaced instead by a little grin. “This a new act, brother? Feign illness that you might take me off my guard?”

“Let us see if it works,” Loki replies, and he feels his stomach lurch within him, but he swallows down his bile. Thor swings, and Loki dances over the edge of its tip, but he stumbles partway through the somersault, and he lands on unsteady feet. The arena is tilting sideways before him, and his hand claps over his mouth to keep himself from vomiting as his knees buckle. His vision is fading to blackness so quickly, and–

“Loki!” Fandral whispers, and when Loki falls forward, he doesn’t hit the ground - he falls against the shirtless expanse of Fandral’s chest, his sweat a sheen against his limp hands, and he vaguely understands that Fandral is lifting him from the ground.

                                                     —

Later that evening, when the healers have permitted him back to his own room, Loki stews in his bathwater. He’s always liked the water cold, but this time he bathes in water that is much ice as liquid, and it feels… It feels good. It feels  _glorious_. For the first time in  _weeks_ , as the summer has increased its heat, Loki feels completely comfortable, and he rests with his eyes closed, his face leaning back against a pillow made of a towel on the edge of the bath.

The healers had seemed perplexed by the extent of his exhaustion and his illness, but they had soothed his rumbling organs and forced him to drink nearly an entire carafe of water. At the very least, he has now been  _told_  he oughtn’t step outside until the heat wave has passed, and he is grateful indeed.

There is a knock at the door of his quarters, but he is so reluctant to leave his bath. “Come in!” he calls. “The door isn’t locked.” He hears the door to the entrance of his quarters, hears it creak softly and then click shut. “Thor, you can come in. There’s ice in the bath, you won’t see anything to scar you.”

The door opens, and Loki stares dumbly at Fandral, who is looking down at the tile of the bathroom floor instead of at Loki himself, his right hand actively  _shielding_  his brown eyes from glancing at the prince in his bathwater. “I merely– I wished to check you were quite alright, I didn’t realise you were bathing. 

Loki shifts in the water, shifting to the edge of the bath, and he sets his hands on the other edge, trying to look under Fandral’s hand. His eyes are red-rimmed and slightly puffy, and Loki frowns.

“Have you been crying?” Loki asks. He sees the apple of Fandral’s throat shift in his gullet, but Fandral doesn’t shake his head.

“I was rather worried, if you must so,” Fandral says, a little archly. “You  _idiot_.” Fandral glances uncertainly over his hand, and then he sees that Loki has the bath between his body and Fandral’s gaze, and he relaxes slightly, his eyes glancing over the sea of ice in the water with him. “How could you do that? You’re so– You’re so  _stupid._ Thor steps on eggshells around you all the time, you know, not wishing to, to condescend or to argue with the extent of your abilities, and there  you were, insisting upon your health as you sat before us with a complexion as chalk, ready to drop dead at any moment!”

It is rare to see Fandral angry. He is the most calm and collected of any of them - even when Hogun and Sif have begun to rage, Fandral is ordinarily still willing to tread the road to non-confrontation, but he is  _shaking_  with his rage, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, and his eyes are watering anew.

Shame coils in Loki’s belly like a snake.

“Had I stepped inside, I would have been admitting to the frailty of my body, already a sensitive point, and I–”

“Frail!  **Frail!”**  Fandral snaps, and he takes a surging step forward, glaring down at Loki with his eyes wild. “You could have  _died_. You should have seen Eir’s face when I carried you into the infirmary, the  _fear_ …” Fandral lets out a desperate sound, and he hides his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. Loki is uncomfortable with the intensity of his emotion, uncomfortable with how  _affected_  Fandral seems to be. He sets his hands on the edge of the bath, over Loki’s own. Fandral’s skin is hot to the touch, and the gold of his - the signet at his ring finger - is a cool band of cool amidst the heat. He looks right into Loki’s eyes, the gold in them  _swimming_  with feeling. “Do you know what it would be like for us to lose you? Do you know how–”

Fandral exhales, softly. “You ought have just gone inside. It doesn’t matter what Thor thinks, what any of us think. You felt  _sick_  in that heat, and you feigned otherwise! You think that Volstagg would even  _try_  to take to the balance beam in the way that you do? You think that Thor wouldn’t fall flat on his face if he attempted one of your somersaults? You think I or Hogun or Sif could stand even a minute in the midst of one of your magical endurance games?”

Fandral’s hands are on his face, and there is but a few inches between their noses. Loki is breathing slightly heavily, feeling the heat of Fandral’s fingers on his cheeks, in stark contrast to the icy water, but it’s a pleasant tingle, a warmth that feels  _good_. 

“You have so many strengths that we do not,” Fandral whispers softly. “Why worry so much about your weaknesses?”

“You don’t have the  _slightest_  idea what it’s like to be me,” Loki mutters, looking down at Fandral’s nose, at his pink lips and short moustache, instead of into his eyes. Fandral laughs, half-wildly. 

“You’re damned right, I don’t,” Fandral says. “Had I even the half of the troubles you face, Loki, I’d have been dead long ago.” Loki’s mouth is dry. Fandral’s fingers are playing soft over the edge of his jaw, his fingers playing over the bare, smooth skin, and Loki wishes he could lean into that touch forevermore. He’s so  _gentle_ , how can he be so gentle? “I don’t know what I would have done, if anything more serious had happened to you.”

He leans in a little closer, and Loki moves to meet him, feeling the featherlight brush of Fandral’s lips against his own. Loki drags himself closer to the edge of the bath, feeling water drip down his chest as he weaves a wet hand in Fandral’s hair, and he kisses him deeply, kisses him  _slow_  - it is intimate, impossibly so, `and he can feel Fandral shiver when ice water drips on the side of his neck, feels Fandral gasp against his mouth–

“Loki?” calls a voice from the corridor, and Loki freezes. 

“I’ll leave via the balcony,” Fandral whispers, and he drags himself away. Loki stares after him as he rushes out into the bedroom, hears the click of the balcony’s door, and he sinks slowly back into his water.

“Come in,” he calls. “The door isn’t locked.”

He brushes his own fingers over his lips, feeling the ghost of warmth there.

Norns. 

 _Norns_. 

**Author's Note:**

> [Hit me up](http://dictionarywrites.tumblr.com/faq). Requests always open.


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